-The Financial Express The proposed MGNREGA changes can help plug the leakages and enhance agriculture productivity There is good news about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) scheme. Recent press reports reveal that the rural development minister, Nitin Gadkari, has instructed lowering of the mandatory share for unskilled wages in total expenditure from the current 60% to 51%. He has also directed, quite rightly, that 50% of the expenditure be...

-The Hindu Guwahati: About 3.68 lakh people in 14 districts of Assam have been affected as the flood situation turned grim with the Brahmaputra and its tributaries - Desang, Dhansiri, Jiabharali, Beki and Puthimari - submerging vast areas in 791 villages. Floodwaters have inundated about 70 per cent of the Kaziranga National Park, forcing animals to migrate to high grounds near the southern boundary across the National Highway 37. Environment and Forest...

-The Times of India PATNA: The Centre and the state government are in a state of extraordinary preparedness to face any eventuality precipitated by the release of 28 lakh cusecs of water accumulated in a lake-like formation caused by massive landslide in river Bhatta Kosi on the Nepal side. Around 2.25 lakh people could be hit in the nine Bihar districts of Supaul, Saharsa, Madhepura, Khagaria, Purnia, Araria, Madhubani, Darbhanga and Bhagalpur....

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-Economic and Political Weekly     Sustained and focused efforts have to be made by the Tamil Nadu state government to provide relief and rehabilitation to the drought affected people of the state. S Rajendran (myrajendran@gmail.com) is with the Department of Economics, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu. Due to the failure of the north-east monsoon in December 2013, Tamil Nadu is witnessing drought like conditions this year, leading to poor agricultural productivity, rural distress,...